


Eating Cake

by Kittywitch



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alcohol, Body Shots, F/M, rococco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3720502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywitch/pseuds/Kittywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Peri crash a large party in pre-revolutionary France. While there, they dress for the occasion, imbibe, eat cake, and ultimately kiss a great deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eating Cake

            The jolt of landing was not nearly as bad as it could be. It had been much worse before. At least this time Peri was not on the verge of getting ill all over the console room and the Doctor was on his feet. They both looked quite pleased about this.

            "Where are we?" Peri asked.

            "The French countryside."

            "And where were we supposed to be?" she smirked.

            "...that hardly matters now." the Doctor answered tersely, circling the console.

            "Doctor," Peri nagged, "You said that this time we were going to get a chance to _relax."_

_"_ And so we shall." he replied. "A lovely place, France. The only complaint I've ever heard about it is that it's full of Frenchmen."

            "Doctor!" Peri gasped.

            " _I_ didn't say it!" he defended. "I simply have a higher than expected number of English companions! Frankly, my dear, you're a bit of an aberration in more ways than one."

            "What's that supposed to mean?" Peri asked defensively.

            "Now, now, now... aren't you supposed to be interrogating me on the nature of our next holiday?" the Doctor prompted. "You've only gotten a country out of me, there's far more to establish before we dare step outside."

            "Okay then, _when_ are we?"

            "We are—ah. That's the part where it all went wrong. Still, no matter, I can look it up easily enough..." He circled the console, pausing only to take Peri by her shoulders and move her out of his way.

            "Well, well, well." said the Doctor. "The chronometer says it's the summer of 1785."

            "Isn't that around the time of the revolution?" she asked nervously. "Doctor, let's get out of here, I know how you tend to get caught up in things and I really don't feel like getting my head chopped off today."

            "Hold on a minute! That's years before the revolution starts! The guillotine hasn't even been invented."

            "Oh, great." Peri rolled her eyes. "So we get the ' _inhumane_ ' death."

            "Peri, I've been travelling history for hundreds of years and almost never been executed even a little. Not counting by my own people, of course."

            "Oh, of course."

            "Besides! Whenever I get people thinking that they _do_ want to execute me, I can usually turn them around to my way of viewing things." Peri cocked her head with an expression of mingled disgust and disbelief.

            "Or I can." she muttered.

            "You can? Whatever do you mean?"

Peri rolled her eyes.

            "Well, Doctor, it seems to me that half the time we get in trouble, I have to make nice with someone just to get you out of it!" pleaded Peri, her voice just starting to shrill, "And we always end up in trouble no matter where we go!

            "And the other half of the time _I_ save _you,_ so we'll have no more of that!" the Doctor shouted, leaning forward slightly as he did so. He frowned and turned back to the console.

            "Right. Earth, France, 1785, summer, roughly eight-thirty at night... oh would you look at that. We seem to have landed in a garden on someone's rather nice estate."

            "We’re in someone’s garden?" asked Peri, circling the console to have a better look at the scanner. She was a little embarrassed that it all it took to peak her interest, but it made a nice change from shouting at the Doctor about who saved whom when.

            "...and if the scanner's any indication, it would appear there's a bit of soiree shaping up. Well, Peri? Any interest in party-crashing?"

            "I don't see how I'd be getting out of it." she replied, rolling her eyes. "We always find the biggest trouble where we land and get mixed up in it."

            "Now hold on a minute!" the Doctor protested. "I always take your opinions into account! Did I not just _ask you_ for it? I spend my days considering what locations you would most enjoy, and our time off the ship primarily concerned with your safety! To suggest otherwise is barely short of criminal!"

            "Criminal? When did making an observation become a crime?" she asked dryly. The Doctor frowned.

            "Do you _want_ to leave?" he demanded, laying his hand on the console.

            "No." she admitted. "I was just saying."

            "Then we are faced with the alternative. Oh, do let's go out and see, Peri." the Doctor pleaded. "I'll have you know I once considered this my favourite period of earth's history."

            "Which part appealed to you more, the pretension or the bloody mayhem?"

            "The music! The culture! The wonderful baroque art and the fire of the common people rising up against their oppressors!"

            "Aaand we're back to the fire. Almost had me there for a minute."

            "Oh, come along!" he protested. "If we don't go out, then I'll just have to start the engines up again and move on."

            "Doctor, you make us sound like traveling circus!" Peri protested, spreading her hands.

            "Huh. Perhaps that's not an inaccurate description." He smiled and paced the room. " 'Roll up, roll up, the magic man in his box has appeared with tales from the stars and artefacts from history!"

            "That's the best idea you've had in a long time." she replied. " 'Come see the great Doctor, let him dazzle you with his nonsense'. "

            "Nonsense, Peri?"

            "Well, it wasn't the first word that leapt to mind." she admitted with a grin.

            "Ah. I may be finally having a civilizing effect on you."

Peri turned and observed the scanner for a moment.

            "So seventeenth-century France." murmured Peri, wrinkling her nose. "I guess I'd better change, then?"

            "Let me put it this way: most noblewomen would be wearing pantaloons longer than your shorts." he answered dryly. "I suppose you could leave as you are, but to say that you were underdressed would be quite the understatement." The Doctor smiled somewhat wickedly, and with a final exasperated smile, Peri disappeared into the main body of the ship.

 

 

 

 

            After a time that would have seemed much shorter had the Doctor been doing something other than waiting, Peri emerged from the wardrobe room and made a comical little half-arabesque. For his part, the Doctor was simply amazed her dress could fit through the door at all. The gown was made mainly of a deep salmon pink with butter yellow ruffles and a white underskirt. It was covered over with ribbon roses and bows and would be nothing short of gauche outside of two places: eighteenth century Paris or twenty-first century Harajuku. Or of course, the court of the fiftieth earl of Venus, but seeing as she modelled her court after the two of those periods that was hardly surprising.

            She'd even managed to dress her hair, all curled back with pink ribbon roses and yellow feathers. The basic shape of it was a bit more Victorian than rococo, but the Doctor saw no reason to apprise her of that fact.

            "Yuck." the Doctor commented.

            "What's wrong with it?" she asked critically, her shoulders slumping in frustration.

            "Your choice in garments, as usual, is far from inconspicuous."

            "You're one to talk." she huffed. "Aren't you going to change, Doctor?"

            "My dear, dear girl." he purred, gesticulating as he talked. "Fashion changes by the minute, but there's never a substitute for style."

            "Definitely no substitute for yours." she grumbled. "If you're going to be complaining about it the entire time-" she gathered the skirt in both hands and turned around. The Doctor caught Peri's elbow.

            "No no, for the time period, it's positively elegant." he ameliorated. "More to the point, with the amount of time it took you to get that on, I don't want to wait for you to take it off again, find something else, and put _whatever it is_ on. Come along."

            He placed her hand in the crook of his elbow and led his friend to the exterior door of the Tardis. For a split second, they stood in the entryway, staring at the door.

            "Doctor-" Peri said warily. He released her arm, turned gracefully on his heel, strode back to the console and pulled the lever which operated the doors.

            He gave a Peri a look as if daring her to comment and resumed leading her out the door as if nothing had happened.

 


End file.
